2012 Herbert W. Nickens Award

David E. Hayes-Bautista, Ph.D., David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA

Medical sociologist David E. Hayes-Bautista, Ph.D., has spent 40 years working to understand and improve the health of Latinos by conducting high-quality research. “Considered by many to be the preeminent Latino scholar in the United States, he is internationally recognized for his research on the culture and health of Latinos,” says A. Eugene Washington, M.D., dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and vice chancellor of health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Currently professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (CESLAC) at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Dr. Hayes-Bautista also serves as faculty director of the Latino Leadership Institute of the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management. This professional development program helps Latinos in leadership roles explore management issues from a Latino and Hispanic perspective.

Through Dr. Hayes-Bautista’s leadership over the past 20 years, CESLAC has produced cutting-edge research, education, and public information about Latinos, their health, and their role in California. The information CESLAC supplies serves as “a significant resource for training medical students, health care providers, and public health officials to manage the care of Latino patients effectively,” says Dean Washington. The center helped UCLA create the university’s first courses for medical and public health students on Latino health.

“Throughout his career he has been equally passionate about proactively addressing barriers to entering higher education and training programs and developing support systems that have ensured the success of thousands of students who are now delivering culturally competent, language-proficient health care,” says Dean Washington. The community college pipeline program that Dr. Hayes-Bautista developed at UCLA, the Medical Preparation and Education Pipeline, or MedPEP, identifies minority students from local community colleges with an interest in graduate health science education, and offers academic and social support. MedPEP has enabled more than 200 students to transfer to four-year universities, with many of those students entering the health care field.

Dr. Hayes-Bautista’s commitment to the health needs of California Latinos has been evident since his earliest days. At the age of 27, he helped establish and was founding director of La Clínica de la Raza, one of California’s first community clinics dedicated to providing services in Spanish at little or no cost for local residents. Today, the clinic is one of the largest community-based clinics in the state, serving 74,000 patients a year at 29 sites. As La Clínica was getting off the ground, Dr. Hayes-Bautista founded what later became the Alameda Health Consortium to give a health policy voice to community clinics in underserved communities in Alameda County.

A sought-after expert on Latino health, Dr. Hayes-Bautista appears frequently in print, radio, and television interviews and makes dozens of presentations a year. He has authored nine books on Latino health and culture, and is a frequent contributor of opinion pieces to major newspapers such as The New York Times.

Dr. Hayes-Bautista received his B.A. degree at the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in medical sociology at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco.

Herbert W. Nickens Awards

Named in honor of the late Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., M.A., founder and past vice president of the AAMC's Diversity Policy and Programs unit, the Herbert W. Nickens Memorial Fund was established by the AAMC to continue advancing Dr. Nickens' concerns about the educational, societal, and health care needs of minorities. The fund supports an annual Nickens leadership award, an annual faculty fellowship, and five annual student scholarships.